Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Hunter was in full stenography mode in an Oct. 9 CNSNews.com article:
GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that the “likelihood” of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler accomplishing his goals in the Holocaust “would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”
“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” said Carson.[...]
“So just clarify: If there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would 6 million Jews have been slaughtered?” Blitzer asked.
“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” responded Carson.
“Because they had a powerful military machine, as you know, the Nazis,” said Blitzer.
“I understand that,” said Carson.
“They could have simply gone in, and they did go in and wipe out whole communities,” said Blitzer.
“But you realize there was a reason that they took the guns first, right?” Carson replied.
Hunter didn't see fit to investigate the accuracy of Carson's statement -- apparently she believes, as the rest of CNS seems to, that statements by conservatives are axiomatically true. But Carson's statements regarding gun control in Nazi Germany are fundamentally false.
The people were, in fact, armed. Alex Seitz-Wald explained in 2013 that the Nazis actually deregulated gun possession for most Germans and exempted some classes of people, such as Nazi party members. The only Germans who were subject to any sort of severe form of gun control were Jews and other persecuted classes.
What isolated incidents there were of Jews fighting back against the Nazis tended to be ruthlessly crushed, as the Huffington Post notes; the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 resulted in the deaths of about 13,000 Jews and just 20 Nazis.
Even the Anti-Defamation League shut down Carson's line of reasoning: "Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state."
But you won't read about any of this in Hunter's article, even though this information was available to her at the time she wrote her article. Carson has spoken, and apparently that's all that matters to her.
UPDATE: CNS is perfectly capable of fact-checking, as it does in this Oct. 12 article by Patrick Goodenough asserting that "In ‘60 Minutes’ Interview, Obama Muddles Facts on Ukraine."
